Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Highbury & Islington station - before and after

TitanSound

Mr Beardy Drummer
WTF were they thinking?! :mad:

Before:

2766618080_ceb25b2be9.jpg


After:

1063927_b9c54288.jpg
 
oh wow.
What happened? Please tell me it was bombed and not torn down through like, choice or somesuch.
 
Loads of stunningly beautiful stations were torn down in the 60s and replaced by ugly shit (or a bus shelter). St Pancras only survived by the skin of its teeth.
 
There is also this "entrance/exit" on Holloway Road. Last I heard though it was filled up with electrical and signalling equipment. Bit daft considering the football crowds due to the Emirates. I know they're about to open up the new entrance that's been bricked up since it was built soon, but surely this would've also helped capacity?

Old+station+at+Highbury+and+Islington.jpg
 
Probably doesn't even connect to the victoria line anymore. I'm sure it's all a bit Neverwhere.
 
There is a plaque on the other side of the road commemorating the bomb that mashed up that area. (top of upper st, other side of the road)
 
There is also this "entrance/exit" on Holloway Road. Last I heard though it was filled up with electrical and signalling equipment. Bit daft considering the football crowds due to the Emirates. I know they're about to open up the new entrance that's been bricked up since it was built soon, but surely this would've also helped capacity?

That entrance was for the lifts to the northern city line (finsbury park-moorgate). The lifts were replaced by escalators when the Victoria line was built, so the entrance is no use now.
 
I don't think the 1904 building (TS's picture) ever did connect to the victoria line (built in the 60s) - it was built for the Moorgate - Finsbury Park line (opened by the Metropolitan Railway, and ended up run as a subsidiary of the Northern Line - more here

Dunno about the NLR building - from what I've seen, a lot of buildings were 'make do and mend' repaired in the aftermath of the war, and it was a heck of a long time before all the 'temporary' was sorted out.

It was a while before the tide of opinion turned in favour of conservation - the Victorian generation demolished a lot of earlier buildings to build what's now seen as conservable; quite a few people criticised what was built in the 30s that's now seen as worthwhile modernist / art deco. 60s architecture hasn't generally made it yet...

There's also the way public spending works in the UK - capital spend (i.e. demolish and build new as cheap as possible) is seen as more acceptable than revenue spend (i.e. maintain what's already there)
 
Most hideous thing about the current H&I station is all the ugly fucking gooners hanging around it on a Saturday.
 
There is a plaque on the other side of the road commemorating the bomb that mashed up that area. (top of upper st, other side of the road)
was the roundabout also caused by bombs? I mean they've tidied it up and that - but I'm sure there were buildings there before.
 
There is also this "entrance/exit" on Holloway Road. Last I heard though it was filled up with electrical and signalling equipment. Bit daft considering the football crowds due to the Emirates. I know they're about to open up the new entrance that's been bricked up since it was built soon, but surely this would've also helped capacity?

Old+station+at+Highbury+and+Islington.jpg

Isn't that now a famous branch of Cash Converters / Cash Generator ? It's only famous for having once been the station entrance though.

The urban redevelopments of the sixties and seventies saw lots of Victoria / Edwardian redbrick buildings being torn down. Why? The idea was they were outdated, old school, and we need to be modern. So we built lots of cubular buildings made of concrete that are now being branded as ugly and torn down. Only to be replaced by steel and glass, which in thirty years time will similarly be derided as torn down as ugly.

Best example I can think of is the Central Library in Birmingham. Check the victorian redbrick construction built in the 1890's, demolished in 1974 for a ring road, replaced by a cubular conrete building, which is now going to be torn down and replaced with what looks like lego covered in barbed wire.

Example:
Old Library: http://www.bobpiper.co.uk/Media.jpeg
Current, 1974 library : http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/content/news/migrated-news/images/birmingham-central-library
New, under construction library: http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images...38697741308/Library-of-Birmingham-des-002.jpg


Compare this:
Birmingham Snow Hill Station then - http://warwickshirerailways.com/gwr/gwrbsh65.htm
Birmingham Snow Hill Station now - http://www.railaroundbirmingham.co.uk/Stations/snow_hill.php
(or this) http://s0.geograph.org.uk/photos/00/25/002523_71594f44.jpg

Also see:Nottingham Victoria Railway Station....


 
Back
Top Bottom